Is it really that close to Christmas!

This December seems to have flown by. This past week has been insanely crazy. Chad has been gone all weekend and most of the beginning of this week. He has been singing in the Christmas tour and doing mission work Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Tonight they are doing their homecoming from their Christmas tour. I have felt like a single mom for sure. Times like this seem to take their toll on both of us. I hate being apart but I know he is giving to the Lord and that makes it worth it.

We have been busy trying to do a few Christmas lessons before we take a break. We didn't do a lapbook this week, but we did a great unit study on the Nutcracker. We have read several different versions of the Nutcracker, so it has been neat to see variance in the different versions of it. I am reading them a longer one now. We are going to see the Christmas Dream put on by Ballet Magnificat. It is a Christian version of the Nutcracker set to the same Tchaikovsky music.

We have learned a great bit about Tchaikovsky, the man and his music. We listened to some of his famous works. There is a great site that teaches about composers (which we also learned what that was) and instruments: www.classicsforkids.com.

We ran into Target yesterday to kill some time between two errands we had to do and the girls saw some nutcrackers on the end display and they were so excited. They wanted to buy one...but we just couldn't fit one more decoration in our house...smile!

We read several books about ballet; the girls loved that! We also did some copywork and dictation out of one of our versions of the Nutcracker. We talked about the author E.T.A. Hoffman, the author of the original Nutcracker and the MouseKing.

We have tried to keep up with some phonics practice and some independent and guided reading even though we have slowed on our general studies.

Today, I had Hannah read numbers to one hundred-spelled out. Then, I had her write some numbers out with the correct spelling.

We've found this great new website called Brainpop Jr. We have been playing with the trial version...and the girls LOVE it. I have to see if we can manage the subscription. It's not too bad if you do it by the month...but we will have to see. Sometimes I just feel like I need something to fill in gaps I may be missing.

This will be our last week of school for a few weeks. Although, we will still be reading and doing some fun things. We have limited our TV viewing so much and I am thrilled about that. The girls are starting to really contribute to the household chores so that takes up some of their time. Hannah has been cleaning out the dishwasher and Mikayla helping to wipe down the table after supper and folding some laundry. I feel like it is so important for them to be apart of life that happens here and see that even on days off, things still need to be done.

We did a few art projects this week. I will put up pictures of these soon. One we did with clear contact paper and tissue paper strips...the other a cute Nutcracker made out of a toliet paper roll.

Enough for now...need to feed our sweet dear one her milk and get her ready for bed!

Ps. She took her first steps last Sunday....not that she is running now...but oh how fun!